Category: Appreciation

  • Sometimes

    sometimes, they’re just beaten into submission

    and we assume their lifelessness is actually death

    when in fact, they’re just cowering out of fear

    hoping that no one will notice them

    but then they wither away because they were not noticed.

     

    sometimes, we find that the smallest things have the greatest impact

    but fail to notice that the small things were actually the big things

    but we were too distracted to notice.

     

    sometimes, life happens while we’re making other plans

    sometimes, death happens while we’re making other plans

    sometimes…we over-think life while forgetting to live

  • To my daughters…

    cynicallyjaded:

    I pray that you never will understand some of what I’m going through, some of what I feel, or some of what I think…because to understand you would need to experience what I’ve experienced. And I wouldn’t want you to feel the pain and the anguish that I’ve felt that made me feel, see and think the way I do. Although it’s the same pain and anguish that has given me this appreciation for life, for a smile on a stranger’s face, or for the chirping of the birds. My wish is for you to learn from my experiences and the experiences of others because there’s so much more to life than the opportunity to make your own mistakes.

    The only way you can cheat time is to learn from the accumulated wisdom of generations past. But if you insist on learning it all yourself, know that you’ll never learn more than anyone who has lived only a single lifetime without any wisdom to draw on. Know that your pain and your anguish will be unnecessary, and know that your life would only ever be half-lived, if even that. So instead I pray that you are able to cheat time, acquire a wisdom beyond what you may inherit, and give your children more than what you had to cheat time with. And if you do this, know that you have achieved more than any human being can be expected to achieve in a single lifetime. This is the only path to immortality that I know. 

  • When people pull their face at the thought of picking up a crumb or a morsel of food that fell to the floor to clean it and eat it, I immediately see this picture in my mind. When yesterday’s left overs leave me feeling frustrated at the thought of having the same meal again, this photo creeps into my head. And worse still, when obese people plunge food down their throats in gluttonous volumes, and discard what they couldn’t finish because they reached the point of nausea, I think of this child.

    This child would probably develop the most beautifully calming smile, with excitement in his eyes, and gratitude in every breath if he were just allowed to share in the crumbs and left overs that so many of us discard out of embarrassment or extravagance, or greed and ingratitude. We’ve become too high class to eat crumbs off the floor, or to save left overs for later unless the left overs are from a distinctly extravagant or indulgent dish.

    There are times when the world leaves me feeling sick to my gut, and disillusioned at their fickle frailties. This is one of those times.

  • Computing Loss

    When others share their views or sentiments about tragic moments in my own life, it often overwhelms me more than the experience itself. Those first moments on hearing the bad news, or rationalising the loss left me feeling sombre, but not always overwhelmed with emotion. On many occasions I’ve been able to hold back the tears and shrug off the pain, only to lose my composure through the simple gesture or words of someone else expressing their sadness at the news.

    I was in Saudi on contract when my father passed away. I recall clearly sitting in the staff bus on our way back from Bahrain where we made the monthly trip to have our visas renewed. It was late in the evening when I received the text message from South Africa. My father had passed away. He was ill for some time after surviving a stroke two years earlier, and he finally succumbed to the illness. I stared almost disbelievingly at the message, but managed to maintain my composure.

    After absorbing the impact of the news, I reached over to a close colleague and showed him the message. He reached out and placed his hand on my shoulder. Only then did the gravity of what had happened hit me. Before that moment, it was just bad news. When he rested his hand on my shoulder, it somehow brought to reality the loss.

    Despite never having a really meaningful or fulfilling relationship with my father, he was a critical influence in my life, and continues to be so. My relationship with him reminded me of something I had heard from a man that was facilitating a leadership course that I had attended early in my career. He said that his father had been the greatest influence in his life. His father always sat in his arm chair day after day and did nothing but page through the daily newspaper. That spurred him on to commit to never be that way, and so his father’s lethargy drove him to achieve great goals and aspirations in his life.

    I’ve often overlooked some of the lessons I’ve learnt from unpleasant experiences and relationships in my life. By far, the most character defining moments for me have always been in times of hardship and great personal strife. Those moments and lessons would have been wasted if I chose to block it out with the anti-depressant medication or other escapist actions that many recommended at the time. I chose not to numb myself to the pain of what was happening. Instead, I immersed myself like a martyr wanting to feel every emotion and every sensation of pain and release, of heartache and joy. And I remained deliberately sober throughout because those were the only opportunities that truly provided me with insight into what truly lies behind the anger and futility in the actions of others. In seeking to understand my own weaknesses and emotions during those trying times, I emerged with an understanding and appreciation for human angst that I would otherwise never have acquired.

    For this reason, I’ve grown to appreciate the struggles of others, and more importantly, I’ve realised that it can always get worse. No matter how bad my situation was, what appeared to be the most intensely despairing experience at the time is just another life lesson now, with each new experience raising my ability to feel joy and pain at a level of intensity that no drug-induced flight of fancy could ever produce.

  • Dinner for one

    A seriously low self-esteem left me concerned that people were always looking at me and seeing how flawed and clumsy and stupid and awkward I was. My first wife made me realise that it wasn’t about them at all. It was about me indulging me. To hell with everyone else. I needed to spoil myself, spend on myself, and just appreciate myself because every day was a struggle, and I needed to reward myself for those struggles that I contended with and still managed to keep my head on straight and maintain my dignity and faith in the process.

    So now I cherish moments when I can sit alone in a restaurant, enjoying a meal by myself, allowing my mind to wander, and turning the tables completely. Where I was the one that felt like I was being observed and mocked and ridiculed, I am now the one looking at others and seeing the tell-tale signs of their insecurities and vulnerabilities being lavishly disguised by fashion statements and obnoxious behaviour…and occasionally I see a couple or even an individual that literally warms me up inside when I witness what appears to be their sincere appreciation of life, or of each other on their faces. At times like that it feels like I’ve come full circle, finally ready to embrace another lifetime of beautiful challenges.

  • Random thoughts about people and me

    I’ve often felt like life was a losing battle. No matter how often I would extend myself to those that I accepted as significant in my life, I found myself grovelling rather than being appreciated. Grovelling for attention or reciprocation that is. The more I extended myself, the less I was appreciated, which in some twisted way actually makes sense.

    We take for granted that which is most readily available. We only appreciate and nurture things that we realise are precious and hard to come by. Otherwise we kick into consumerism mode and forget about the blessings at hand (I hate the fact that I can’t even use the word ‘blessings’ and similar words without feeling like I’m being a religious zealot simply because of all the scripture-thumpers out there).

    Anyway, at the risk of sounding cryptic, I think that focusing on the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of ourselves is more important than focusing on external factors that we cannot control. What I mean is the ‘what’ should be our decision about what is or isn’t truly important in the bigger scheme of our own lives, right? While the ‘how’ is our decision regarding how we choose to accept or achieve how the ‘what’ plays out in our lives.

    I guess what I’m trying to say is that if the focus is on making conscious decisions regarding what affects us, and learning to accept the things we cannot influence about the behaviours and decisions of others, we’ll find ourselves less often in a position to be trampled upon or taken for granted. This approach, whilst it took forever to realise, has worked well for me. At times it threatened to isolate me from people that I wasn’t willing to let go of, but it also made me realise that if I was significant at all to them, they would realise the potential loss and do something about it to avoid the rift from happening.

    But the devil in all this is our often low self-esteem. When we assume that we’re not worth the effort, we become victims and martyrs to situations and desires that we believe we will never acquire for ourselves unless we sacrifice ourselves in the process. It’s a self-fulfilled unfulfilling prophecy. And if this is still sounding cryptic, it’s because that’s how life is. It’s the biggest puzzle we’ll ever try to assemble, which reminds me that the best way to build one of those massive 5000 piece puzzles is to start from the outside and work your way in. I think the same is true with life. We need to start by determining what our boundaries are, what we’re willing to compromise and what is non-negotiable. Once we have that nailed, we need to decide how we’re going to go about filling in the pieces that will complete us.

    This all reminds me of a simple thought process I often share in my workshops with others regarding brainstorming. It comprises of three simple components, and talks directly to the puzzle analogy. Output, Method, Resource. If we start by defining what the objective (output) is that we desire, we can then understand what methods or actions would be needed to achieve it. And once we know that, it will be that much easier to determine the resources required to make it all happen. That’s the easy part. Once we have that plan drawn up, it takes courage and determination to act on it and make it happen. That’s usually where most of us suck because of that same demon called self-esteem. A healthy self-esteem really is the best gift any parent can give their child, ever!

  • Gratitude is not simply a state of mind

    Gratitude is not simply a state of mind, but rather a state of being. Appreciating someone but restraining yourself from openly expressing it, verbally or otherwise, is of no use to them, and only sows the seeds of selfishness in your own heart. True appreciation would result in a willingness to acknowledge the impact that someone else’s efforts or contribution has on your life. Anything less cannot be appreciation. If we are willing to consume, then we must also be willing to contribute as well. Otherwise we introduce an imbalance in our lives that can never lead to healthy relationships. Don’t let your fear of allowing significant others into your personal space result in the destruction of beauty in your life.

    As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.

    John F. Kennedy

  • The dearth of expectations

    Disappointment is a dampener, a wet blanket, a downer and a doos*. It’s a taunting reminder that despite our best efforts, we live with expectations and not hope. Living selflessly, or at least as selflessly as your ego would allow, is limited only by the lack of reciprocation from those for whom we sacrifice. 

    But those sacrifices are not always overt. Sometimes it’s as subtle as restraining yourself from doing or objecting to something you would otherwise not allow to persist. … this is starting to sound like superfluous bullshit.

    It’s actually simply this. I once again invested in the coaching and mentoring of an individual that assumed the position of entitlement and in a single sentence was able to dismiss every ounce of personal extension that I afforded her in my efforts to encourage her to be more than she thought she was capable of. 

    But the real joke in all this is that I expected anything more!

    *doos – pronounced ‘dwerse’, which is South African slang of Afrikaans origin that refers to the female genitalia in a derogatory manner